Developer: IndieGala
Publisher: IndieGala
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on: PS4
Die Young (PS4) – Review
Over the past couple of years, we’ve covered a preview and a review for Die Young, an impressive open-world horror game, where you have to explore, craft, and fight your way through to survive the whole ordeal. We concluded that the game pretty much made a great impact in terms of graphics and gameplay possibilities on PC, but can it also stand its own ground on consoles such as the PlayStation 4? What’s so different here? Is the game better? Is the game worse? Do we still plummet to our death on a regular basis (yes)?
Story
The game starts up with a short prologue/cutscene where we get to meet the youthful, adrenaline-junkie named Daphne – our protagonist whom we will be playing as throughout the whole game. In said prologue, we discover her life before the horror: who she was, what she did, and how she and her group of friends eventually ended up on an island full of crazies.
The prologue is short and to the point. While it’s pointless in most games, it’s definitely not the case here. We learn to get to know who we are playing, which helps us connect with the protagonist, and we get to understand the reason how she can survive this well in such rough nature although she’s a high-end city girl. We also learn more about the circumstances on why and how she (and quite a few other people) ended up there in the first place.
The actual game starts up where the prologue ends. We – through the eyes of Daphne – wake up to a loud rumbling sound. Dazed and confused, we see a bright light coming down from above. Through our blurry vision, we’re starting to make sense of our surroundings and it seems that we were left at the bottom of a dry well. Luckily, we were suspiciously left with some useful items like a map and a compass to start off our journey on the right foot. Determined to find our friends and escape, we climb up the stone walls. After climbing out, we’re free to roam in any direction as we please. So everyone will discover the island and the story in different orders and at their own pace. Who knows, you might even miss a few clues on why you are kidnapped and who these murderous cultists are, totally changing the ending to your playthrough. Because, yes! This game has multiple endings: good, neutral, or even bad.
Graphics
If you look through some of the screenshots provided in this article, you can already tell that the graphics of the game are magnificent on PlayStation 4. Yes, the textures and details could be a little smoother, but other than that, we have no real remarks. The environment looks quite realistic, and combined with the sound, it feels that you’re actually enjoying a Mediterranean Summer. If you, at least, can turn a blind eye to all the blood trails and gutted bodies that are randomly found around on the island. It’s definitely not a pretty sight to behold.
Sound
The environmental sounds and the sound effects in Die Young are impeccable. All effects used sound pretty authentic and fully deepens your immersive experience on the island. Combined with the tensive music that accompanies you throughout your journey, it actually keeps you on your toes and gives you the actual feeling of being hunted the whole time. It would’ve been appreciated if the eerie music was timed a little better. At some locations, there’s no danger at all but you get startled by the surprise ominous music anyway. The latter makes you question if the scary music actually indicates any danger or if it’s just programmed that way.
Gameplay
Die Young is an open-world horror adventure game that puts your survival skills to the test. The game requires you to climb unbelievable heights, care for your hunger and thirst, craft medicine and weapons, and fight off different kinds of enemies; all the while you explore this godforsaken island. Set on finding your friends, fighting off murderous cultists, and escaping the island, you discover more and more of what is going on around you. The difficulty of exploring the island depends on yourself, whether you choose to play ‘Adventure Mode’ or ‘Survival Mode’. The difficulty can be changed at any time during your playthrough.
The main gameplay here is to navigate your way around the island and explore. So of course, the game consists of a lot of running and climbing. Or as you will: parkour. This is very interesting to have in a survival game because you probably have to do all that stuff in real life too when you’re ever stuck on an unfamiliar island, getting hunted by who knows what. This gives the adventure part of the game an extra edge. Except it gets very tiring after a while, since you’re parkouring at every – single – location, at any – given – opportunity. Can’t we just.. climb over this one wall and move on? It gets especially frustrating when you plummet to your death many many times just because it’s hard to calculate your landing in the first-person mode. It’s not just the dying part that is frustrating here, it’s the repetitiveness of loading up your last save file, the long loading screen, and the hassle of traveling to the exact spot you died at to then probably fall and break your neck again.
If you don’t mind all of that, or you don’t die as much in the game in general, it is suggested to play the game in ‘Survival Mode’. As said before, you will be exploring and walking around quite a lot. By playing the game in ‘Adventure Mode’, you’ll get much easier gameplay on the survival part of Die Young. Meaning, you have more health, you can craft more items and can craft much faster, and you barely have to eat or drink throughout your playthrough.
Now that we mentioned enemies and action together, let’s get into the combat part of the game. Most of the island’s occupants (e.g. wild animals, protection dogs, or crazy humans) are hostile and don’t like you roaming around all willy-nilly. It is then up to you to protect yourself by fighting back. Luckily for you, there are plenty of weapons to be found around the island. The fighting is mostly done in close combat, which is purely blocking and attacking. Seeing as we are able to crouch and sneak around our enemies, it would’ve been nice to have the opportunity to perform a sneak attack and do a stealth kill on those bloodthirsty cultist bastards.
Conclusion
Thrilling, adventurous, and mysterious; that’s what the story of Die Young is all about. This makes you want to discover more and more of what’s going on on the island. This, in turn, makes exploring and wandering around a bit more bearable and less boring. Because, sadly, the impressive sound, graphics, and scenery are not enough to make it more exciting. In terms of gameplay, overall – eh – it was okay, but stealth mechanics are greatly missed, close combat could also use some more polishing, and so much parkouring in first-person is just enraging. All in all, Die Young has its flaws but it’s definitely not a bad game, and actually recommended for beginners in the open-world survival/horror genre. The game checks all the boxes: it has a thrilling storyline, there’s an actual sense of exploring, discovering, and surviving, the gameplay is quite easy to understand, and the objectives are quite clear. You just need a bit of time to find your own way (and not die too much).
Die Young (PS4) – Review,
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